


Person of Interest recap for 5x04 (6,741)

by fursasaida



Series: Person of Interest Recaps Lifeboat [10]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 18:16:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19431475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fursasaida/pseuds/fursasaida
Summary: I am much more at peace with this episode now than I was at the time. I would still have preferred for Root and Shaw to get a little more time together between Shaw coming back and the endoutside a simulation(Root's arguments about reality notwithstanding), but especially considering the shortened season order I think I can understand the choices here. In the end, this is very intense romance for PoI, which tended to handle romance with a very light touch; Root and Shaw got more dedicated romantic (and sexual!) coverage than any other couple on the show. The most comparable episode is probably the one where Harold has to give himself up to Decima to save Grace seasons earlier, and while they did get the suggestion of a possible happy ending all the way at the end, that scenario itself sure didn't work out for them.I say all this 1) because it's interesting revisiting these pieces years later, 2) because it's how I feel now, and 3) because I do want to amend one thing I said a couple of times in the review: it's not true that "nothing happened" in this episode.





	Person of Interest recap for 5x04 (6,741)

**Author's Note:**

> I am much more at peace with this episode now than I was at the time. I would still have preferred for Root and Shaw to get a little more time together between Shaw coming back and the end _outside a simulation_ (Root's arguments about reality notwithstanding), but especially considering the shortened season order I think I can understand the choices here. In the end, this is very intense romance for PoI, which tended to handle romance with a very light touch; Root and Shaw got more dedicated romantic (and sexual!) coverage than any other couple on the show. The most comparable episode is probably the one where Harold has to give himself up to Decima to save Grace seasons earlier, and while they did get the suggestion of a possible happy ending all the way at the end, that scenario itself sure didn't work out for them.
> 
> I say all this 1) because it's interesting revisiting these pieces years later, 2) because it's how I feel now, and 3) because I do want to amend one thing I said a couple of times in the review: it's not true that "nothing happened" in this episode.

I did anything else but write this review after “6,741.” I joked with my M.A. graduating class on Facebook. I made summer plans. I WATCHED _SE7EN_. (Please take that in. I watched one of the bleakest and most violent movies in existence _for recovery_.) I started writing, stopped, started again, went to sleep (usually I write these in the middle of the night). I simply could not figure out how to approach this.

To be honest, I still don’t know how. That’s partly because it was simply an overwhelming episode; it’s partly because while so much happens in this episode, almost nothing happens at all. Which brings me to my conundrum.

When Root and Shaw finally had not just a moment, but _whole days_ of not longing or flirting or what-if-ing but _being together_ , I was overjoyed. This was always my problem with Shaw’s not-death last season: I could live with her “dying” and coming back, but I was still unhappy with the idea that the show was willing to give us all the “what if” and none of the “is.” All of the “maybe someday” and none of the “yes, now.” So, of course, I loved their reunion, their first onscreen physical union, their incredibly emotional scene at the park—it was not only everything I’d wanted, but more.

[LOST IMAGE, presumably from the sex scene]

And then it turned out none of that was real.

Hear me out, okay. On the one hand, it was real, in that it was emotionally real for us as the audience watching it until the final reveal, and in that it was emotionally real for Shaw. Shaw experienced that as real life: every emotion she expressed, choice she made, or touch she felt was real for her. It was what she would have done—or at least, would have wanted to do—in the scenario. This is the point of Greer & co.’s simulations. So on the level of: is it confirmed beyond even the most stubborn of doubts that Shaw loves Root too, desires Root too, cares for Root and the rest of the team too? Yes. It was real.

On the other hand, in the literal sense, none of this was real. It never happened. It was all inside Shaw’s mind (and Samaritan’s) and on an evil doctor’s monitor. And for me, at least, there was something deflating about realizing that yet again a love story between women on television has a “but…” attached to it. This doesn’t negate the possibility that when Root and Shaw are reunited in reality, we might get something similar, or something different but also exciting and affirming. But for now, at this moment, I find my feelings still very confused.

I swear to god I’m resorting to pros and cons here. Let’s do it.

**PROS:**

The sex scene wasn’t just intimate and accurate to the characters (of _course_ they would fight for dominance and break things); it was a lot more explicit than a lot of sex or love scenes between non-straight characters on television. Often such scenes are filmed with the height of modesty, as though to split the difference between doing what the story requires and not freaking out any straight people. I appreciate that this one did no such thing! I appreciate it _very much_. (Some homophobes on Twitter were pretty upset, so you know the show was heading in the right direction!) 
  * The episode’s conceit allowed Shaw to be effusive and demonstrative with her affection to a degree she never would be in reality. She just doesn’t like being that open about her feelings, unless said feelings are a desire for food or violence. Sarah Shahi actually kind of backs me up on this **[Ed. Note:** In the original I linked to an interview on The Site That Shall Not Be Named here **]** (though I won’t quote and dissect her statements, as that leads me to some conclusions I think might count as spoilers).
  * In a kind of return to “If – Then – Else,” Shaw’s killing Reese felt almost like an apology for the fact that we all know he should have died in that episode, and would have, were it not for unexpected developments in Sarah Shahi’s life. (Or it did before I found out it didn’t really happen.) While I like Reese enough that I’d like his actual death to have a little more buildup and emphasis, at the same time the idea of his being unceremoniously sacrificed on the altar of Shaw’s return was not something I was mad at. And her little broken whisper of “No, don’t, please don’t” when she thought he was going to draw his gun and press her to shoot him again was truly moving.
  * Having this all be a simulation means one of two things, possibly both, depending on how much we think Samaritan vs. Shaw was controlling the course of events: First, that Shaw has absolutely no doubt in Root’s love for and commitment to her, and second, that Samaritan ships #2SAM2FURIOUS as hard as the most dedicated Tumblr blogger. Possibly Samaritan _has_ a Tumblr. (Did you think I had forgotten about #2SAM2FURIOUS? That’s adorable. I will never give it up.)
  * It also means the show can go to the level of commitment that has Shaw killing herself rather than endanger Root— _thousands of times_ , so strong is that dedication—without Shaw…actually…killing herself.



**CONS:**

  * We still have to go through the motions of Shaw dying onscreen _again_ , though. And in that sense, they get to have the Tragic/Dead Lesbian cake and eat it too by avoiding backlash. I was in absolute disbelieving, furious shock until the final reveal, and while in general I don’t object to a show putting its viewers through the emotional wringer, in light of the wider context I don’t know how I feel about that particular instance or choice of emotional trickery.



[TWO LOST IMAGES: I think these were gifs from the scene of Shaw "dying" again.]  
_Even looking at these makes me miserable and I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT I THINK ABOUT THAT_

  * We can’t be sure how much of Shaw’s expression here and how many of her choices were heavily pushed for and structured by Samaritan, honestly. We can’t fully trust that this is an honest or true representation of Shaw’s feelings. I’m not trying to tell you, reader, not to enjoy what we got and take it as as real as you like, but the lack of clarity over exactly what role Samaritan itself plays in these simulated scenarios niggles at me.
  * If—and I want to stress that this is conditional— _if_ this is the apotheosis of Shaw and Root’s relationship onscreen, then yeah, I think I’m pretty unhappy that the show has chosen to create a world in which this is only possible in an unreal situation. In “If – Then – Else,” the simulations always ended in tragedy for both of them (and the team at large), and the contrast was the _real_ scenario in which Shaw can come to the rescue and light up Root’s face. It still ended tragically, but the underlying conclusion one draws from that structure is that their bond makes them _stronger_ , that the _reality_ of their being together is not only better but _more feasible_ than the simulation of their being apart. This is, more or less, the opposite: Apparently there are seven thousand scenarios and counting in which Root and Shaw working and being together leads inexorably to death. We’ve heard that one before.



Well, it looks like the pros outnumber the cons! That honestly takes a weight off my mind. I truly could not decide how I felt. To note some things I am _not_ conflicted about, then:

The episode is very well-made. We got multiple genres here. We got a conspiracy thriller reminiscent of The Prisoner at the start with Shaw’s escape; psychological drama through Shaw’s brainwashing (AN IMPLANTED CHIP THAT IS A PLACEBO, THAT IS _FUCKED UP_ ); a cat-and-mouse game between Greer and Team Machine; and a love story. We got Sameen Shaw’s Bourne movie, basically, and it was a Bourne movie in which one of the main threads is a romance between two women. That is a cool thing that I’m cool with.

[LOST IMAGE: A screencap with subs on of Root saying, "Because somewhere in your sociopathic heart, you know we belong together."]

It was also visually quite compelling, and I should note that the filmmaking does a great job of being both riveting and fair: they gave us many hints. I actually suspected it was all in Shaw’s head several times, but when the false reality just kept not breaking, after a while I came to believe it. I suppose on some level I thought there was no way they’d hold it out for the whole episode. (Where I got this idea, I cannot say.)

But there were so many clues, really. The pulse of light Shaw experiences when she first touched the wound seemed too much like a deliberate act of conditioning—it was just too well coordinated. Her escape goes perfectly. She finds herself blocked by a beach and a sea, and maybe it’s because I had listened to [the Inception episode of Overinvested](http://www.overinvestedpodcast.com/episodes/inception) earlier yesterday, but I saw that water and immediately thought, “nuh uh.” And then there’s a convenient boat. Shaw never pays her cabbie, the various amateur brain surgeries she undergoes are perfectly fine, her seizures and moments of weakness are always long enough to be scary but never actually incapacitating, and somehow her physical abilities remain undiminished after nine months strapped to a bed. And somehow, no matter how, when, and where Shaw and the rest of Team Machine move around New York, Samaritan can never see them. (Except when it suddenly becomes relevant to the scenario, toward the end.) In some ways that was one of the biggest clues: the show’s entire visual language was different. We skipped almost all transportation to just arrive, dreamlike, at various sites; even the camera angles were different, I think, a little lower and squarer than usual. The breadcrumbs are absolutely there.

I liked how Shaw sees John here—someone she doesn’t have deep emotional investment in, but can rely on operationally. He makes sure she’s got get-well whiskey (true friendship, in Shaw’s world and also in mine), and when she insists on escalating the fight against Samaritan right then and there, his “Ehhhh, why not?” expression is exactly right. I was sort of sad at how negatively she treated Harold—though maybe that was partly Samaritan’s own bias, its need to cut its rival’s maker down to size?—but the sweet scene in which he apologized for giving up on her was lovely. I did think his holding her hands was a bit much, though; possibly another one of those breadcrumbs.

Ultimately, this is canny storytelling. It gives us everything we wanted, takes it away, then shows us that even if we’ve gained nothing—since nothing actually happened—we haven’t lost anything, either. The episode does a very clever job of building up just enough wrongnesses to get us to wonder, but not enough to pull our attention fully away from the (RIVETING) events taking place. It really is very well done. I’m just conflicted about its having been done in the first place.

Final notes:

  * I remember how mad you guys were at me after I got upset with Shaw’s death in “If – Then – Else.” This is just how I feel; I’m not trying to tell you to feel the same way!
  * A couple of interviews with the showrunners in which they make it abundantly clear that their intentions were to give the Shoot fans what they felt we “deserved” and had been waiting for before their show went off the air can be found at IGN and [XFN](http://xfn-blogs.xfinity.com/tv/2016/05/10/poi-boss-teases-rootshaw-relationship/). Whether they succeeded in handling it “in a really responsible manner” is up to the reader to decide.
  * Shahi was, of course, fantastic. From semi-conscious to ferally violent to sexy to loving to tragic, she nailed all of it. Someone give her her own action franchise already.
  * I spent all of last night being smol and overwhelmed, basically.




End file.
